The Master’s degree reform challenges our guiding principle to improve health for all
Only one department at Health will be affected by the Master's degree reform. But it will be hit hard. Supporting and strengthening the Department of Public Health is a task for the entire faculty.
"From the Dean’s Desk" – a column in Inside Health
Shortly after a meeting in the Academic Council at which we talked about involvement, I received an email from one of the members of the council. She had thought about our discussions and suggested that I write directly to employees at Health in the faculty's newsletter. She suggested that I could write about some of the initiatives currently on my desk, so that all employees can keep abreast of some of the things we’re working on at the faculty.
I think it's a brilliant idea - thank you! I intend to continue this column once a month from now on.
At Health, we strive to improve health for all. This is a guiding principle for our research and for our degree programmes.
Improved health for all can be about making sick people well. But it can just as much be about prevention and health promotion, in other words the foundation of public health.
We need only to think of the challenges facing society in terms of obesity, declining fertility, physical inactivity, etc. Then there is the transformation agenda raging in the healthcare sector, where research into the structure and organisation of the healthcare sector will have even more prominent place.
If we as a faculty are to help meet the challenges associated with public health and the organisation of the entire healthcare system, we need to think more broadly about health sciences. This is one of the reasons why the programmes we provide for our students and the knowledge we create in the research environments at The Department of Public Health are important. Our programmes have implications for human health and well-being.
How we safeguard this public interest, which is also our faculty’s interest, is taking up a lot of space on my desk (and in my thoughts), while we also have to tackle the massive challenge of implementing the Master's degree reform. A reform which means that, from 2025, we will have to reduce admissions to the Bachelor's degree programmes in sports science and public health science and later work on restructuring the Master's degree programmes at The Department of Public Health.
We can’t alter the fact that the department has to deliver on the requirements of the Master’s degree reform. But as a faculty, we can work to limit the damage by looking at the allocation of our finances and at the opportunities presented by the Master’s degree reform, for example cross-disciplinary collaboration on new Master's degree programmes.
As a faculty, we will insist on making significant contributions to improving health for all and helping to solve the major challenges facing society within health. Therefore, it’s crucial that we show solidarity and stand together as a faculty. Finding solutions is a shared responsibility.